AUCTION SET FOR PROPERTY NEAR REMOTE CONCHAS LAKE.

Byline: STACI MATLOCK

County selling lots

to recover back taxes

By Staci Matlock

The New Mexican

Here's a gamble riskier than cards in Sin City: Buy a piece of lakefront property in northeastern New Mexico.

Anyone with a few hundred dollars burning a hole in his pocket can bid on 1-acre lots near Conchas Lake on Wednesday at the 4th Judicial District Court in Las Vegas, N.M. At 10 a.m., the state Taxation and Revenue Department will auction off 116 lots, located a half-mile to a mile from the lake, to recover $73,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest. The lots are among 1,300 properties that San Miguel County turned over to the state last year for delinquent property taxes.

The department auctions off properties after owners fail to pay their property taxes for at least three years. The state also will auction off 107 Sandoval County properties Thursday at the Bernalillo Recreation Center.

Conchas Lake is a popular fishing and boating reservoir, with little else around it but some scattered groups of trailers and houses, and a few private docks. About 85 percent of the lake's shoreline is privately owned. Little of it has been developed, in part because there are few roads and little infrastructure in the remote, rugged country.

The lake lies 75 miles southeast of Las Vegas and 35 miles northwest of Tucumcari, fed by the Canadian and Conchas rivers. The Army Corps of Engineers built a 200-foot-tall concrete dam there in 1939 to control flooding and provide irrigation water, but it also became a 25-mile-long recreation oasis in the middle of red-rock canyons, mesas and sandy badlands. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manages the eastern portion of the reservoir. State park officials and private operators manage campsites, a nine-hole golf course, marina, lodge and restaurant.

The state Department of Game and Fish stocks the lake with bass, catfish, bluegill and walleye, and fishing is open year-round. But boating depends on lake levels, which have declined in recent years because of a lack of snowpack and an ongoing drought in the northeastern part of the state.

Developers calling themselves the San Mateo Community Center began selling property around the lake in the 1970s. "They promised a great resort, lakefront property," said Elaine Estrada, the San Miguel County assessor. One subdivision, Ranchos Lake Conchas, boasted more than 3,000 lots. But the developers never put in water, electricity or other infrastructure. "People kind of gave up on them," Estrada said.

Big Mesa, another subdivision, has 798 properties. The lots to be auctioned Wednesday are in nearby Mesa Rica subdivision.

Many abandoned Conchas Lake properties have delinquent taxes, according to Alfonso Ortiz Jr., San Miguel County treasurer. His office is getting calls from people tired of paying property taxes on something they'll likely never use. "Some of the lots are reverting back to grazing areas," Ortiz said.

The auction will be at the courthouse at 496 W. National Ave., Las Vegas.

ON THE WEB

u www.tax.state.nm.us. Click on the Property Tax Division, Delinquent Properties.